Page 149 of Caged

I take a step forward, nervous energy firing through my veins. “What else?”

“We had to dose him with a custom sedative to slow his autonomic responses: Heart rate, breathing, body temperature, all of it. Pain, trauma, and stress prolong his body’s “fight or flight” response, and that’s extremely dangerous while the silver is still circulating in his system and trying to shut down his organs.”

Calder takes another deep breath. “His heart was already close to failing, so anything that affects metabolic stress is going to push him closer to cardiac arrest.”

“So, he’s in a coma?” Silas weaves his fingers through his hair and tugs on the strands, eyes tight with anxiety.

Calder nods solemnly, then shoots a weary look toward Dax and me.

Dax clocks the hesitation on the doctor’s face instantly and turns on him. “What aren’t you saying, Calder?”

Calder leans forward and clasps his hands between his knees. His expression morphs into something that scares the shit out of me.

“Don’t freak out.”

I let out a disbelieving bark. “Yeah, okay. You’re about three hours too late for the Don’t Freak Out portion of this evening’s activities, but sure.”

“We had to dampen the pack Bond.”

Everyone’s voices explode at once.

“What? How the fu-”

“That’s not possible-”

“You can’t just-”

Dax’s bark cuts through the chaos. “Speak. Now.” His voice is dangerous. If I were the doctor, I’d be about three seconds away from pissing myself.

“Just what I said.”

The glare on Calder’s face could peel paint. I’m reluctantly impressed by his ability to push back against Dax’s anger. “Relax. It’s not like we cut it off. I told you we need to keep him stable. Not just physically, but emotionally as well. The more you two were freaking out, the faster his heart was racing, and the harder it was to stabilize him.”

Dax narrows his eyes and takes a threatening step forward. “What the hell does that mean?”

“It’s like putting a pillow over the face of a screaming person. We didn’t kill it, we’re just managing the volume. We can’t have him constantly affected by your testosterone-laden Alpha anxiety party.”

Dax’s lips peel back from his teeth. His fangs drop—long, sharp, and gleaming in the flickering overhead light. The sound that rolls up from his chest is primal and lethal. This isn’t simply a pissed-off friend. This is an Alpha responding to a direct threat to his pack. This is a warrior reminding everyone around him what it means to feel like prey.

Lenora takes two giant steps to the side—without looking up from her charts—to get out of the splash-zone.

Smart woman.

I press my hand to my chest. Before, I only had to think about our Bond to see it in my mind’s eye. Now, though, I have to really concentrate. It’s there, but the threads seem flimsy. Almost see-through.

My stomach rolls with nausea. I wipe clammy hands down the front of my jeans and try desperately not to throw up. I know, logically, that I haven’t actually lost anything, but it feels like I have. It feels like someone stole a part of me and locked it away somewhere I can’t reach.

I genuinely have no idea how Calder manages to ignore Daxen’s outburst, but he does. “We’ve healed the silver burns on the outside, but the inside is a different story. There’s still residual silver in his kidneys and liver. The good news is that the damage is reversible. If we can keep him stable long enough to let his body heal.”

“How long are we talking here?” Gav scrapes a palm down his face.

“If we’re lucky, days. But I’m leaning more toward weeks. Possibly a month or more.” The moment Calder drops that bomb, my panic skyrockets.

A month?

I’m supposed to be without my best friend, my brother, my fucking pack mate for a month? I’m somehow supposed to go four fucking weeks without feeling him in the Bond, without hearing his voice, or his laugh, or his godsdamned lectures about protocol. A month spent wondering if he’s going to be okay. If he’s going to live.

The days extend before like a nightmare I’ll never wake up from. A future’s full of nothing but anxiety and terror.